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early design by Zhang Heng

His seismoscope for registering earthquakes was apparently cylindrical in shape, with eight dragons’ heads arranged around its upper circumference, each with a ball in its mouth. Below were eight frogs, each directly under a dragon’s head. When an earthquake occurred, a ball dropped and was caught…

principles of operation

…early seismic instrument called the seismoscope made no time record of ground oscillations but simply indicated that shaking had occurred. A Chinese scholar, Zhang Heng, invented such an instrument as early as 132 ce. It was cylindrical in shape with eight dragon heads arranged around its upper circumference, each with…